


Secrets to Immortality

by Haeronwen



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, British summers, Children, Domesticity, London, M/M, Theatre, Tourism, gratuitous stationary use, middle class problems, pop culture references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4692449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haeronwen/pseuds/Haeronwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Yusuf was right to question Arthur’s ability to take care of children, since Arthur’s modus operandi in a crisis is not to call the emergency services but to think <em>this wasn’t in the folder</em>, and maybe his spirit animal is not, as he has always maintained, Stanley Tucci in various incarnations, but the vase of petunias from <em>The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy</em>.</p><p>(In which London is calling, and Eames is definitely not in Arthur’s folder.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Decision

_Do you know why it’s impossible to lick the tips of your elbows?  They hold the secret to immortality, so if you could lick them, there’s a chance you’d be able to live forever.  But if everyone did it, if everyone could actually lick the tips of their elbows, then there’d be chaos.  Because you can’t just go on living and living and living._

—Nick Payne, _Constellations_

———

Arthur likes lists.  He likes legal pads and bullet points and the comforting flow of ink on paper.  When he was a kid, there were notebooks. He still has them all, on a shelf below his DVD collection: spiral bound, neon, mock leather, the one that still smells like oranges thirteen years later.  The one he got free with Star Hits magazine that has the creepy floating heads of eighties popstars on the front.  They’re all full of lists.  Favourite foods, favourite people, favourite songs, favourite lyrics, things he wanted, things he’d never do, things he’d do when he grew up.  Lists of clothes to take on vacation, books to read, an ideal survival team for a Jurassic Park–style scenario.

These days, they tend to be To Do lists, and inventories, and budgets, but there are also best movie endings, places to visit, clothing he can’t afford.  A lot of them—most of them—have no practical applications or real purpose, except that there is something inexplicably satisfying about committing them to paper, giving them solid form.  Ranking the best episodes of West Wing by quantity of Donna never fails to make him feel better. 

Paul does not like lists.  Paul is pre-med and painfully beautiful, all angles and long limbs, bursts through the paper trail that is Arthur’s life and tramples it underfoot, and Arthur lets him, because Paul is a series of checked boxes and he is not about to fuck this up.  Arthur lets Paul crawl into his bed at three in the morning smelling of smoke and Paco Rabanne, lets himself be dragged out to jazz bars even though he hates jazz and he hates bars, drives six hours to a baseball game when he could drive three hours home.

Which means that when Paul says, “I’ve met someone else,” and Arthur is left reeling, he only has himself to blame.  He can sit on his unmade bed in a scarf and a knit cap and wonder who and where and _why_ this happened, but the truth is _he let it_ , so he might as well get up and try to fix the thermostat—Yusuf sure as hell isn’t going to do it.

-

Yusuf majors in Chemistry, which Arthur imagines involves a lot of people standing as far back as possible.  To be honest, Arthur has never seen him do anything close to resembling school work; Yusuf seems to spend most of his time on their couch playing Plants Vs Zombies, because, he claims, all other zombie-based video games are too intense to play whilst also _high as a fucking kite_.  His kitchen cupboards are almost certainly a biohazard, but he stays out of Arthur’s, and there is nearly always takeout of some kind in their fridge.  All in all, it’s not a bad arrangement, especially considering the fact that Arthur spent his freshman year in on-campus housing with six females who stole his conditioner and left passive aggressive notes by the toaster.  By comparison, Yusuf is pretty low-maintenance.  As long as he’s watered every now and again and Arthur remembers to Febreze before the landlord comes over, they’re golden.

The fourteenth night in a row that Arthur doesn’t say, “I’m headed to Paul’s,” Yusuf says, “Is Paul in quarantine?” followed almost immediately by, “Should we get pizza?”

“No,” Arthur replies.  “And yes.”

“Bummer,” says Yusuf.  “Pepperoni?”

-

Three days before his first mid-term, Arthur sits on the couch in his thermal jacket at one AM and makes the entirely logical and not at all rosé-induced decision to systematically erase all trace of Paul from his life.  He is two and a half glasses in and forced to concede that texts and instant messages amount to very little in the way of evidence, that the photographs are few and far between—that the whole endeavour is really embarrassingly easy—when, scrolling down his Facebook newsfeed, he sees the link.

It’s attached to a message from one of his former roommates to someone Arthur doesn’t know, the substance of which is:

                girrrrrrrrrl  Mallorca this summer?? GET YO TAN ON xxxxxx

Followed by a winky face and something Arthur thinks is supposed to be a penguin, which begs a number of questions beginning with _does she think Mallorca has penguins?_ and ending with _how is she at a top twenty school?_   Arthur spends thirty seconds contemplating the proper pronunciation of that many Rs (the French way?) and then clicks on the link.

It turns out to be an appeal for help wanted on a Mallorcan farm (yet another question: _does she know a lot about goat upkeep?_ ).  Five hours a week, bed and board, twenty minutes from the beach.  The photos are pretty spectacular, but it’s not Arthur’s idea of a vacation—once when he was seven his mom took him to a petting zoo and an alpaca stole his ice cream and he’s never really gotten over it, okay?—so he’s on the verge of closing the tab when the words ‘select country’ catch his eye.

Out of mild curiosity, Arthur clicks on the drop down menu.

-

“Arthur,” says Yusuf, “take it from someone who has ordered _a lot_ of cat food from Amazon.  Drunk decisions are not good decisions.”

This is true.  April’s Golf Pants Incident and really all of Yusuf’s Christmas shopping for the past two years being further examples.  In this case, however, Arthur sober is entirely in agreement with Arthur drunk, who admittedly very occasionally falls asleep on public transport but almost always remembers to put in his retainer.  Consequently, Arthur sober ignores Yusuf, and continues to type with purpose.

“You’ve never met these people.  Not everyone is as easy to live with as I am.”

“True,” Arthur agrees.  “But they probably have central heating.”

He has the ad open on his laptop so that he can flick back and forth between tabs.  Mr and Mrs Stafford of SW4, London, United Kingdom look like they’ve walked straight out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue, and are currently _seeking live-in nanny for two beautiful children_.

“Should you really be allowed near kids?” Yusuf wants to know.

“I resent that.”  Arthur babysat as a teenager.  He’s not a complete novice.  More to the point, it’s a little galling to be called irresponsible by someone wearing footie pyjamas.

“You fell asleep cradling that wine bottle like a baby.  When I tried to wake you you said, ‘London has dinosaurs,’ and rolled over.”

“Well,” says Arthur, “drunk me makes a very compelling point.”

London does have dinosaurs.  Plus, you know, theatres, galleries, restaurants, live music.  A big wheel.  Jude Law.  Room and board and a generous living allowance.  Absolutely zero ex-boyfriends to be reminded of.

London isn’t just on one of Arthur’s lists.  It’s a list all its own.

-

A week later, Arthur buys a moleskine.  He reads Michelle LaRowe and Jo Frost and Emma Kensington, cover to cover, signs up for a paediatric first aid course, watches YouTube videos on how to braid hair and make pancakes with smiley faces on them.  He makes lists—everything he knows and everything he doesn’t about taking care of kids—and tries not to freak out when the latter is longer than the former.

He sends email after email to Julia Stafford, because she did say to _let her know if he had any questions_ , and it turns out he does: allergies, bed times, TV policy, likes and dislikes are just the tip of the iceberg, and he’s not going into this one blind because it might only be three months, but it’s still a job, and Arthur is never going to be anything less than a consummate fucking professional.  (Toning down the language might be a start.)

Mrs Stafford responds with photos of the family at London Zoo—two squirming, grinning, red-cheeked, blue-eyed kids in yellow rubber boots—and scan of a picture the children have drawn him.  There are flowers and rainbows, and something resembling a South Park character in one corner.  And at the bottom, in large, uneven script,

 _arthur we cant wait To play with you_  
_Love Immy X X      and felix_

Arthur sends more emails, with more questions, and receives answers to about fifty per cent of them.  What he does receive he arranges in order of importance and types up, prints out double-spaced, and supplements with précised sections from the Red Cross booklet and _The Nanny Bible_ , and then puts it all in a ring binder and colour codes the pages based on their assignment to one of five categories.

“Seriously?” says Yusuf, midway through his third stack of pancakes.  “That’s better than my thesis.”

-

Three weeks into what is turning out to be a surprisingly straightforward job, Arthur returns from dropping the kids at school to find a guy drinking milk in his boxers at the kitchen counter.

Except that he doesn’t find him, so much as catch sight of him in the mirrored back of the AGA while he’s making his coffee and maintain awkward eye contact for several fraught moments as his heart rate reaches new heights.  Arthur wonders vaguely if there was a page missing from the folder—whether, right next to the paragraph about keeping the fox away from the garbage, there ought to have been an addendum on half-naked men and dairy consumption.  ( _Remember to lower the thermostat in the mornings, or you might suffer heat-induced hallucinations masquerading as unconventional sexual fantasies._ Something along those lines.)

And really, maybe Yusuf was right to question Arthur’s ability to take care of children, since Arthur’s modus operandi in a crisis is not to call the emergency services but to think _this wasn’t in the folder_ , and maybe his spirit animal is not, as he has always maintained, Stanley Tucci in various incarnations, but the vase of petunias from _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_.

“You must be Arthur,” says the mirage, with a voice like sin.  “Mum has told you absolutely nothing about me, I’m sure.”


	2. The Children

Julia Stafford storms through life in four inch heels and tailored dresses, a beautiful whirlwind of Chanel and resolve; she is clever and uncompromising and terrifyingly direct.  Arthur adores her.

Her friends are lawyers and producers and designers, former models who once hooked up with members of the Brat Pack, and one columnist at the _Times_ who asks Arthur’s opinions on everything from presidential candidates to gun control.  Macaulay Road is South West London’s equivalent of small-town living: a lot like Arthur’s hometown, if everyone in Roxbury, Connecticut shopped at Waitrose and painted their nurseries Middleton Pink.  They all know one another, and they all know about Arthur—“You’re the big news,” Sarah Forbes said to him, his first week (“Florrie, darling, we don’t snatch other people’s brioche, _do we_?”).

Julia is the regional director at a premium travel agency, head office in Mayfair, social secretary of the Tennis Club, chair of the PTA, and part owner of a children’s clothing label.  On Friday nights, she goes for drinks with friends; on Saturday mornings, she does Pilates.  She has three calendars and two diaries and none of them seem to overlap.

Something was bound to fall through the cracks.

-

If there’s some form of social etiquette in place for dealing with the barely clothed firstborn of your employers, Arthur’s not aware of it.  In the end, he opts for, “I didn’t know to expect you,” which has the benefit of being both truthful and more diplomatic than _I had no idea you existed_.

The guy just grins, like he knows exactly what Arthur’s thinking (kind of presumptuous, since Arthur isn’t entirely sure what Arthur’s thinking).  “Thought I’d pop by,” he says, airily.  “Surprise the family.”

 _Not to mention the hired help._ “I just dropped the kids at school,” Arthur tells him, in case the fact that it’s ten AM on a weekday and the house is mercifully silent isn’t indication enough.  He stands with his back to the AGA feeling vaguely _deer in headlights_ as the guy hops down from his stool and closes the space between them.

“Eames,” he says, offering his hand, and really it shows how far Arthur has come in the last three weeks that he doesn’t even blink at the name.  At last count, he’s met two Byrons, three Cecilys, a female Tertius—whose parents have mortified Arthur’s delicate linguistic sensibilities—and either two out of three Italian Masters or fifty per cent of the Ninja Turtles.  He texts the best ones to Yusuf and receives in response variations on _fuck off_ and _you’re taking the piss,_ because Yusuf lived in London until he was eleven but apparently Hackney isn’t quite SW4 (less artisan bakeries, at a guess). 

“Nice to meet you,” says Arthur.  Eames’s hand, when he shakes it, is surprisingly soft; he has tattoos stretching the breadth of his shoulders, pink lips and pianist’s fingers.  They’re sizing one another up, Arthur realizes, which would be slightly less uncomfortable if both of them were wearing pants.  As it is, Arthur is trying very hard not to look at Eames in any way that might be misconstrued while Eames, evidently, contrives to make his life difficult.

Arthur has the horrible, sinking feeling they’re setting some kind of precedent.

-

Immy throws herself down the steps and into Arthur’s arms with reckless abandon.  There are few things, Arthur has learned, that Immy _doesn’t_ do with reckless abandon.  Climbing.  Scooting.  Colouring.  They made cupcakes one afternoon and Arthur let her stir the batter.  When she talks he can see her mother in her face, in the set of her jaw and the light in her eyes.  When Immy grows up, she says, she’s going to be a superhero.  Arthur absolutely believes it.

Farrow Hall has a strict uniform code, even for the kids in Prep: shorts and waistcoats for the boys, skirts and straw hats for the girls.  (Something called ‘knickerbockers’ in winter, which Arthur thankfully doesn’t have to deal with.)  In a sea of navy blue blazers, Felix is invariably the one missing his, usually because he’s traded it for The Big Stick.  Felix loves cherries and chocolate mousse, and is deeply suspicious of tomatoes.  He likes Arthur best when Arthur is chasing him with the hairbrush.

The day that Eames arrives, Arthur picks them up as usual: parks the car round the corner and is stood outside Felix’s classroom at three fifteen on the dot.  Rebecca Loomes is telling Grace Reed-Davis about their nightmare with the ongoing basement conversion; inside the classroom, Arthur can see Fabian Reed-Davis flicking balls of paper at the back of Katie Loomes’ head.

It’s business as usual until they get home, and the kids stop dead in the entrance hall; Arthur, who is carrying two backpacks, one gym kit, and various pictures adorned with glitter and macaroni,  and has turned back to put the chain on the door, almost falls over them.  They’re both looking at the sneakers lying at the foot of the stairs—with good reason, Arthur thinks.  They’re hard to miss.  Almost _deliberately_ ugly.

Felix turns to Arthur and says, “Is he _here_?” with something close to reverence.

Immy is already in pursuit.

From the dining room there is a shriek and a sound like a wounded animal. Then, with barely concealed amusement, “Imogen, young ladies do not headbutt houseguests.”

“You’re not a houseguest!”

“Nor are you a lady.  I’ll allow it.”

Eames is standing in the entrance to the kitchen, barefoot in sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, Immy tucked under one arm.  “Hello, trouble,” he says, when Felix appears.  “Learn anything at school?”

Felix says, “Nope,” with obvious pride.

“Neither did I.”  Eames grins.  “Fifteen thousand a year well spent.”

Arthur, because he doesn’t feel like squeezing past Eames to get into the kitchen, or standing there like a spare part while the three of them roughhouse, sets bags and pictures down on the dining table and gets out homework diaries.

“I can count to sixteen _in French_ ,” says Immy.

“I hit a tree with my stick,” says Felix.

“Both fine accomplishments,” Eames affirms.

“ _And_ ,” Immy continues, “Arthur’s going to teach me all the colours.  And how to say goodbye in Spanish.  Because Arthur knows Spanish, too.”

Arthur is majoring in History and French, with a minor in Italian.  He read _La Chute_ in an afternoon.  His knowledge of Spanish does not go beyond basic greetings and the expletives Javier Madero taught him in seventh grade.

“ _Really_?” says Eames, with interest.  “Arthur must be terribly clever.”

“ _And_ ,” says Immy, while Arthur stares very hard at the pages of the diary and pretends his ears aren’t getting hot, “he does a _lovely_ French braid.”

And, yeah.  That’s it.  That’s what they’ll inscribe on his tombstone.  _He did a lovely French braid._

“A good all-rounder, then.”  Eames sounds delighted, which probably has to do with the fact that Arthur is obviously blushing.  Damn him.  “No wonder Mum’s so taken with you.”

It ought to be a compliment— _is_ a compliment, a big one, to be told that your employer likes you—but something about the way that Eames says it sounds more like a challenge.

-

Arthur makes spaghetti, and Eames hovers.  Arthur makes spaghetti to Yusuf’s recipe, because Yusuf has the opposite of a refined palate, and it turns out five- and six-year-olds are partial to the flavourless.  (For various reasons relating to quantity and colour of vegetables, Arthur’s three-bean chili wasn’t a hit.)  Unfortunately, less vegetables also means less things to chop, which means more time to make eye contact with Eames, who is leaning against the counter pretending to drink from the plastic teacup Felix brought him.

Eames says, “You’re sure you won’t have one?” with his pinkie in the air.

Arthur washes pots while the kids are eating.  Eames sits with his feet propped up on the table, and steals food from Immy’s plate when he thinks Arthur isn’t looking.

Immy says, “Felix, you have sauce on your nose.”

Felix says, “I know.  I put it there.”

Arthur’s not an idiot.  As a rule, in fact, he is overly suspicious, which Yusuf likes to point out to him at intervals (usually when Arthur catches him watching something embarrassing, like bad porn, or The Twilight Saga).  When Eames says to the kids, “After dinner, we’ll raid Mum’s jewellery box for treasure,” Arthur looks up and Eames is grinning, which is how he knows Eames was fishing for a response.

And this, _this_ is the sort of ambiguity that Arthur hates, because Arthur is good at what he does, but the only way this works is if he understands the dynamics—knows when to step in, and when to back off.  He’s in charge of Immy and Felix, not Eames, but if Eames is encouraging them to break rules, is Arthur obligated to challenge that?  Should he leave it alone?  Is he going to be held responsible, if Eames lets them do something they shouldn’t?

Julia Stafford, he thinks, doesn’t seem like the kind of person who appreciates surprises.

Arthur pulls out his cell and types, _Hi, just wanted to let you know that Eames is home_ , before adding, _Were you expecting him today?_ because a question is not a lie, even if he knows the answer to it.  He watches Eames twirl spaghetti around his index finger, and then he presses _send_.

Three minutes later, Eames’s phone vibrates on the table.  Eames looks at the caller ID and then reproachfully at Arthur, as if to say, _so, that’s how it is_ , and Arthur looks straight back.  Because, _yeah.  That’s_ exactly _how it is._


	3. The Problem

London has plenty of good coffee shops.  (Arthur has a list.)  Taylor St Baristas, in Mayfair, where the chairs are church pews, and the house blend is the best Arthur has tasted.  Lavish Habit, in Balham, equal parts café and vintage clothing store, where they sell thick slabs of banana and coconut breads covered in butter and syrup and call them toast.  Prufrock on Leather Lane, TAP in Soho, Flotsam & Jetsam in Wandsworth.  There’s a place near Northcote Road where the tea leaves are all in mason jars behind the counter labelled things like _blue sky_ and _Notting Hill_ , and Arthur is so tempted to ask what _broken dreams_ tastes like, but the barista is Italian and mildly terrifying so instead he sips his amaretto coffee quietly.

Arthur knows good coffee shops.  The Kick is not one of them.  The Kick serves two types of tea and three kinds of coffee, and a very questionable white hot chocolate.  It’s a five minute walk from Farrow Hall, sandwiched between a nail bar and a Caribbean restaurant (a unique combination of acetone and coconut for which Arthur was unprepared).  There is a Gertrude Stein quote stencilled onto the wall opposite the counter, but Arthur has never been able to make out more than three words at a time, since the dimensions of the room and the size of the font make it difficult to stand far back enough to read the entire thing.  The hand dryer in the bathroom doesn’t work.

Arthur is two spiral stamps away from a free latte.

It’s not a good coffee shop, but it has proximity in its favour—close enough to the kids’ school to head there after drop off, but not edgy enough that he’s likely to run into any of the moms.  Even at peak times, he’s never had trouble getting a seat.  Plus, he’s getting to know the regulars, like the girl with the Hello Kitty satchel, and the guy who sits in the corner with his chessboard trying to catch someone’s eye.

Most importantly, when Arthur rolls in just before nine on a weekday with a thumping headache, Ariadne shoves a cappuccino at him and says, “What did he do this time?”

-

Arthur has a routine.  He sets his alarm for six forty-five, hits snooze twice, scrolls through Facebook for six to eight minutes, and then catches his hip on the counter in the ensuite.  He lays his clothes out on the bed beforehand, which actually has less to do with being meticulous than it does his desire to minimise time spent naked (Immy has a tendency to burst through unlocked doors without warning).  He’s showered and dressed by half past, when Graham and Julia leave for work; Immy has peanut butter on her toast, and Felix has jelly.  Felix has to be wiped down, after.

Out of the door at ten past eight, school by eight thirty.  Gym kits on Mondays, swimsuits on Fridays.  Pickup is three fifteen.  On Tuesdays, Immy has ballet.  On Thursdays, Felix has karate.  (On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Arthur puts extra fruit roll-ups in their backpacks, and moves the Poole Pottery out of reach of aggressive pirouettes.)

Eating with the kids is the opposite of relaxing, so Arthur has his breakfast after dropping them off.  Pop-tarts, usually, because there’s only so much organic granola a man can take.  And coffee.  Coffee from the oversized chrome contraption that Graham presented to Arthur with all the pride of a new parent, using terms like “Aeroccino” and “nineteen bar high pressure system” while Arthur pretended to know what they meant.  (Suffice to say it’s ruined him for Starbucks forever, which is all the more problematic since he’s a student—he can’t afford to be developing _standards_.)

Eames says, “He trusts you with his coffee machine,” like it’s worth remarking on, another detail to be filed away.

“As opposed to his kids?” Arthur asks, with genuine confusion, and Eames grins.

“Funny,” he says, and again, Arthur can’t help feeling that he’s missing the joke.  Conversations with Eames tend to play out this way—like there’s a subtext Arthur isn’t quite getting.  Cultural differences, maybe, except that he doesn’t feel this out of step talking to Julia, or the rest of the street.  There’s a subtext there, too, but it tends to be more along the lines of _I’m wearing my Faliero Sarti cashmere scarf, have you noticed_? and frankly Arthur has picked up South West London Working Mother disconcertingly quickly.  He knows now that “Riverford” means vegetables, “Jamie” means Oliver, and that when someone mentions Dante they’re referring to the kids’ tennis instructor and not the fourteenth-century poet.

He doesn’t know what it means when Eames says, “Big plans tonight?”

It feels like a dig, because they sleep in the same house, on the same floor—Eames can’t fail to know that on weeknights Arthur goes to bed at eleven, usually after an episode of Gilmore Girls—but there’s something more to it than that.  (Expectation?  Challenge?  ~~Genuine interest?~~ )

Eames doesn’t have a routine.  Eames gets in at odd hours, and eats cocoa puffs for dinner because he’s chronically indecisive.  He makes his presence known in subtle ways—increased Frube consumption, the cap left off Arthur’s moisturiser in the third-floor bathroom—and in unsubtle ones.  Ugly stretched out t-shirts in with the kids’ laundry.  A lot of Jeremy Kyle on the Sky Plus.  Sometimes Arthur goes to get a glass of water in the middle of the night and there’s smoke rising in slow spirals from the trampoline.  Eames has no pressing commitments, as far as Arthur can tell, but seems to gravitate to whatever room of the house Arthur is currently occupying in order to make that lack of purpose clear. 

“So,” says Arthur, since awkward small talk seems to be their accepted method of communication, “you’re studying right now?”

By which he really means: _is there nothing else you should be doing while I’m trying to wash up?_

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What’s your major?”

“Theatre,” Eames says, and Arthur thinks, _of course._ RADA, or LAMDA, maybe Central.  He has the soft vowels and the self-assurance they like in British drama schools.  It’s not a stretch to imagine Eames doing _Hamlet._ Perhaps it shows on his face, because Eames presses his hip into the counter right where Arthur is reaching for the dish towel and says, “I promise not to soliloquise at you.”

Arthur frowns and wipes his hands on his pants instead.  Distracted, he says, “No rhyming couplets, either.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself,” says Eames, before he goes to put some clothes on.

-

“Beer belly?” Ariadne asks, knowingly.  “Backne?  Weird chest hair?”  It’s after eleven and The Kick is experiencing a lull, which means that Ariadne has made herself an earl grey with four sugars and is sitting with her DM-clad feet up on Arthur’s table.  (He’s afraid to look too closely at the place’s hygiene rating.)

“No,” says Arthur, slightly disturbed.  He wants to ask.  But he also really doesn’t.

Ariadne shrugs.  “If he’s not hideously deformed, I don’t see the problem.”

Arthur thinks that he possibly needs to make better friends.  “It’s inappropriate,” he explains, as if to a small child, and Ariadne sticks her tongue out at him (which frankly tends to be the way that Immy deals with things, too).  “What happened to all the British reserve I was promised?”

“Ah,” says Ariadne, “we were misled there, I think.  Exhibit A: the Coach and Horses on a Friday night.”

“He’s not _drunk_ ,” says Arthur.  “He doesn’t even lack understanding of social etiquette.  He just chooses to ignore it.”

“Did you just use the term ‘social etiquette’?  Arthur, are you secretly an Austen heroine?”

“Fuck off.”

“No,” she decides.  “Definitely not an Austen heroine.”

Arthur frowns and sips his coffee and tries to look less like someone who flounces.  It’s not like he’s being so unreasonable.  Arthur is the kind of person who wears layers like armour, thick jackets and shirts under sweaters, because he’s used to cold winters, but also because underneath he’s all long limbs and sharp edges (to the extent that other people’s grandparents would try to feed him up).

Eames, on the other hand, likes to start conversations about British sporting events while in the buff.  And it’s no good saying it shouldn’t bother Arthur, because it should—yes, it’s Eames’s home, but does he also walk around like this when the cleaner’s here?  did Petra just fail to mention this?—and besides anything else Arthur’s not _blind_.  Eames looks about as dangerous as it is possible to look while also sounding like he should be on Downtown Abbey, but it’s calculated—a warning he has inscribed in his skin, in the ink sprawling the breadth of his shoulders, cultivated in the curve of his bicep.

Eames is dangerous, Arthur thinks (knows), but not in the way you’d expect.

“He’s just,” he tries, “so—.”

“Oh,” says Ariadne.  “It’s _that_ kind of problem.”

-

On Monday, Eames asks Arthur if he likes jam roly-poly, because Eames knows that Arthur doesn’t know what that means, and he wants Arthur to ask so that he can feed him brilliant lies that will eventually embarrass Arthur in some social situation.

Arthur says, “Felix, put that trowel down _right now so help me_.”

-

On Tuesday, Immy disappears conveniently before Arthur has a chance to go through her homework diary.  Arthur follows the sound of giggles to the third-floor landing where Eames’s door stands ajar, and he can see from the glow and the bumps in the duvet—one large, one small—that they’re sat under it with a torch.

After a moment of protracted silence in which no one moves, Eames says, “Password?”

Immy says, “Password!”

Arthur says, “I’ll come back.”

-

On Thursday, Arthur says, “I did _The Wizard of Oz_ in middle school.  I was the Tin Man and one of the flying monkeys stole my hat,” because he’s fucking awful at small talk and ~~trying~~ failing to be funny, and then he blushes to the roots of his hair when Eames says, “I always did like Baum.”

On Thursday, Arthur pours himself a bowl of organic granola.  He doesn’t deserve pop-tarts.


	4. The Exhibition

From: Arthur Cohen <arthur.cohen@gmail.com>  
To: Yusuf Malhotra <yusufmm@outlook.com>  
Subject: You were British once

                The fuck is celeriac mash?

From: Yusuf Malhotra <yusufmm@outlook.com>  
To: Arthur Cohen <arthur.cohen@gmail.com>  
Subject: Re: You were British once

                Some subset of dubstep?

-

“You should really go to Kew Gardens,” says Julia, one Saturday morning, because Julia Stafford is the kind of person who does her best to organise everyone else in between eight AM Pilates and nine AM meetings with landscape architects.  Arthur can’t blame her: she has two children under the age of seven, a husband who is perpetually late, and a son who delights in turning up unannounced.  Arthur isn’t sure whether he should feel touched or embarrassed to be included in this.  “It’s lovely this time of year, and we have a family pass.  Rupert could take you.  Make himself useful.”

“Useful?” repeats Eames, who apparently is too unique for a normal (if slightly stuffy) name like Rupert and so has taken matters into his own hands.  “Indispensable is what I am.”

“That remains to be seen,” Julia replies, though Arthur thinks he detects the ghost of a smile on her lips.  (The problem with Eames, Arthur thinks, is not so much that he thinks he’s funny but that everyone else does, too.)

Eames presses a hand to his chest as if mortally wounded, and then settles back against the couch to continue watching Can Fat Teens Hunt.

“I actually have plans tonight,” Arthur says, with no small amount of satisfaction, since for once it’s true and they’re more socially acceptable than Facetiming with his mother.

-

Ariadne is Canadian.  She does well with cold weather and calls knit caps “toques”, which is patently ridiculous, but they bond over the proper pronunciation of _pastel de nata_ and then over the culture shock that is London and aside from a brief blip over polarised opinions of Tarantino films it’s all uphill from there.  She knows how he likes his coffee (strong and sweet and as far as possible from Eames) and he knows that she was kicked out of the Girl Scouts for liberating an ant farm, which really is as firm a foundation for friendship as any.

Ariadne is the reason that Arthur finds himself standing in the middle of the Dulwich Picture Gallery and thinking about Eames.  Granted, she has more to do with the standing and less to do with the thinking, since generally speaking Arthur spends more time thinking about Eames than he’d like to admit.  Eames has become one of those mildly unhealthy fascinations that tend to manifest as Facebook stalking and culminate in an accidental ‘like’ on a post from May 2009 and never being able to look that person in the eye ever again.  Since Eames currently resides in the same house as Arthur, Facebook stalking rendered unnecessary, what this mostly comprises is Arthur picking up abandoned items of clothing and wondering whether Eames really went to an Aqua concert or if he’s been wearing the shirt ironically.

Such is the mystery that is Eames.

Ariadne pops up beside him without warning, and says, “You look like you’re having an epiphany,” in a way that makes clear she knows exactly what Arthur was thinking about at that moment.

Caught off guard, Arthur defaults to, “What do you think of the tessellations?  Have you read the Pólya paper on plane symmetry?” because buzzwords and caffeine got him through a semester of Architecture and Urbanism so surely they won’t fail him now?

“You’re really slightly terrifying,” Ariadne tells him, “and I hope you know that.”

At Ariadne’s suggestion, they’re drinking Merlot—“that one, the cheap one with the rabbits on the label”—at an Escher exhibition in Dulwich.  Arthur didn’t require much persuasion: he likes modern art, and he likes graphic design, and he especially likes the concept of ‘lates’, something that London as a city seems to have embraced without reservation—the fact that all art is better after several glasses of wine.

Particularly this one.  This one he has been standing in front of for at least ten minutes—looking at the gravity wells and thinking about free fall, and then about Eames and the way his lips twist when he says Arthur’s name—which is possibly what tipped Ariadne off.

“I don’t know why you’re obsessing about this,” she says, as she hands him another glass.  “You clearly want to do something about it—so, do it.”

Lazy platitudes and painful clichés threaten to burst forth: _I don’t know what you’re talking about.  It’s not that simple.  It’s not like that._

Rather than say any of these things, Arthur takes a large and unsophisticated gulp of his wine, because it is.  It is _exactly_ like that.

There are a number of reasons that Arthur shouldn’t even be contemplating this, starting with it being unprofessional and ending with it being embarrassing, but really when it comes down to it the thing that is holding him back is this:

Eames scares the hell out of him.

-

 _Raspberry ~~jelly~~ _**jam**  
_Whole milk_  
_Sausages_  
_Frubes_ **(peach!!)**  
_Pasta spirals_  
_Kids’ shampoo_  
_Green pesto_  
**cookie crisp**  
**jazzles**

-

It’s not that Arthur can’t hold his own.  He can.  He is more than capable of giving as good as he gets.  For every one of Arthur’s shopping lists that Eames feels compelled to improve, Arthur deletes an episode of Come Dine With Me from the Sky Plus.  When they go to Immy’s recital and Eames rummages distractingly for several minutes and then offers him a “jelly snake”, Arthur confiscates the bag.  Sometimes Eames gets in at two in the morning and Arthur listens as he makes his way up the stairs.  (Sometimes Eames stops outside on the landing, and Arthur wonders what would happen if he were to open the door.)

Unhindered, Eames has insinuated himself into Arthur’s routine, into his day, into his life, when it should be the other way round.  Arthur is the outsider here, but it is Eames who has adapted, Eames who pushes the boundaries while Arthur sets the rules.  Some of it, their being thrown together, is inevitable, with Immy and Felix and the fact that Eames is finished with school for the summer, but a lot of it is not.

The disregard for personal space and the awkward conversations and the teasing in general, it’s all explicable, if not always comprehensible; Arthur could put it all in a box and label it ‘Eames likes to make people squirm’ and it’d be easier to deal with, except—

Except that there is no box that Arthur can devise that will contain Eames.  Just as his clothes and his reality television and his sweet tooth spill out into the house, Eames the Person spreads out whenever Arthur’s not paying enough attention—inches further into Arthur’s space.  It’s not fine that he does it, not exactly, but when it comes to the nakedness and the charm Arthur has at least developed coping mechanisms (namely: ignore them and hope they go away).

What Arthur is unprepared for is the Wednesday morning that he settles in at The Kick with his copy of _Doctor Faustus_ to find the margins filled with annotations that aren’t his own.  His first instinct is that he’s picked up someone else’s book by mistake, except that the shelves in the Stafford house are full of _New York Times_ bestsellers in hardback with pristine covers, not flimsy editions of Renaissance drama that have spent too long in airport holdalls, and, yeah—there’s the watermark on the back cover where he spilt juice on the tray table.

Arthur obviously looks as incredulous as he feels, because Ariadne sets a banana nut muffin down at his elbow and then retreats quickly.  He flips back to the beginning of Act I, where there’s—yep—a detailed breakdown of the chorus, and—several pages on—a reference to a book by David Robb on clowns and fools.  The handwriting is sprawling in places and spidery in others, but the only ~~logical~~ explanation that Arthur can come up with at the moment is that Eames has annotated his book for him.  Eames has, somehow, borrowed Arthur’s book and filled it with observations on the sexualization of magic and the gendering of performance, interspersed with what look like directorial notes and additional stage directions, and by Act III, Scene II a brief synopsis ( _Day 2: pope-tackling_ ).

Arthur doesn’t really know what to do with that.

**-**

_Raspberry ~~jelly~~ _**jam**  
_Whole milk_  
_Sausages_  
_Frubes_ **(peach!!)**  
_Pasta spirals_  
_Kids’ shampoo_  
_Green pesto_  
**~~cookie crisp~~**  
**jazzles**  
_You’re just making things up now, aren’t you?_

-

“Escher, hm?” says Eames, the morning after Arthur makes friends with a Smurf on the late bus back from Dulwich.  They are in the kitchen, which is where most of their ill-advised interactions seem to happen, and Arthur is very slowly and carefully buttering his toast.  He is worried that if he butters it any more vigorously he might throw up.  Again.

Arthur is not sure if Eames is expecting more than a one-syllable response.  He suspects that Eames is aware that Arthur might not be capable of more than a one-syllable response, and is testing that theory.  Possibly Eames is wondering how Arthur manages to be so hungover after spending the night at an art gallery (since Eames has not met Ariadne).  Possibly Eames thinks that Arthur is lying about his whereabouts and therefore is trying to catch him in a lie.  Possibly Eames is very interested in the work of M. C. Escher.

These are all possibilities that Arthur does not have the capacity to deal with at the moment.

Eames also happens to be monopolising the hazelnut spread.  (He is still not wearing pants.)

Arthur sets the knife down, gingerly.  He says, “His prints play with perspective and impossible constructions,” in one breath, and fails to mention that if you drink a lot of Merlot and squint they’re also quite the trip.

“Sounds _fascinating_ ,” Eames says, adding more Nutella to his toast.  “And your friend, the one you went with—?”

“She studies Architecture,” Arthur says, because of all the ways to describe Ariadne this one by far _requires the least words_.

As if in response to the thought, Arthur’s cell buzzes, and he slides the screen to read the text.

_July 8, 2015           9:17 AM_

                thanks for seeing me home last night  
                also there is some sort of blue paint on one side of my jacket, plz throw light on this??

-

 _Raspberry ~~jelly~~ _**jam**  
_Whole milk_  
_Sausages_  
_Frubes_ **(peach!!)**  
_Pasta spirals_  
_Kids’ shampoo_  
_Green pesto_  
**~~cookie crisp~~** **spoil sport** ~~~~  
~~**jazzles**~~  
_~~You’re just making things up now, aren’t you?~~_  
**delicious chocolate buttons topped with multi-coloured sprinkles**  
_Toothpaste_


	5. The Epidemic

From: Yusuf Malhotra <yusufmm@outlook.com>  
To: Arthur Cohen <arthur.cohen@gmail.com>  
Subject: Re: Microwave Mug Cakes

                ¼ cup flour, ¼ cup milk, ¼ tsp baking powder, 2 tbsp cocoa, 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp peanut butter, 1 tbsp choc chips.

                1 min.  Blitz it.

                Also: fuck you, I made madeleines once

-

Two things happen in quick succession.

The first is that London collectively loses its shit.

The second is that Arthur does.

-

Arthur, like any sane person who grew up with New England winters, loves the heat.  He seeks it out, cat-like: knows all the spots in the house that get the sun in the mornings (here, the breakfast bar in the kitchen and the toy chest beneath Immy’s bedroom window).  Coming into this he knows enough about British summers not to get his hopes up.  Needless to say, he is completely unprepared for the moment that the rain finally lets up for more than a couple of days at a time, and the temperature threatens to break ninety degrees.

He is not as surprised as the British.

HEATWAVE, screams one headline, when he stops by the grocery store to pick up ice creams for the kids.  MET OFFICE PREDICTS HOTTEST SUMMER IN FIFTEEN YEARS, says another.  A third opts for, TOWIE’S ARG IN GBBO PORKY (Arthur doesn’t know what any of these words mean, and is perversely delighted by that fact).  For a country that spends most of its time complaining about the weather, everyone seems strangely perturbed by the sudden improvement.

Weather forecasts become a game of one-upmanship.  The tube is by all accounts “an absolute _nightmare_ , I’ll be so glad when we have the Mini back” (“hot as balls,” Eames confirms, with customary delicacy).  According to The One Show—which Arthur isn’t _watching_ , he can hardly help it if Eames has it on while he’s doing the kids’ ironing—fruity cider levels have reached a dangerous low.  Julia’s Jo Malone candles are melting faster than Selfridges can stock them.  The cat seems to have passed out in the hydrangeas.

Arthur, by contrast, unfurls as the temperature rises.  He digs the kids’ swimsuits out from under their beds, stocks up on sunscreen and aloe vera.  He makes pitchers of iced green tea and puts them in the fridge, where Eames looks askance at them when he goes searching for his yoghurt (as a general rule, Eames is deeply offended by what Arthur considers to be tea).  He goes for a run, for the first time in weeks, with his iPod cranked up and the bass pounding in time with the blood in his ears, along sun-scorched tarmac and up through the common, where there are deck chairs and picnic blankets spread over every inch of green.

He feels calmer than he has in months.

Obviously it shows, because in between gulping glasses of water and grinning from ear to ear, hair plastered to his forehead and pulse still pounding, Arthur catches Eames watching him.  “What?” he says, too full of adrenaline to be anything other than nonplussed.

“Arthur,” says Eames, with all the authority of someone who has spent the afternoon drinking Dr Pepper through a curly straw, “it is _thirty-two degrees_.”

“Yes,” agrees Arthur, who has yet to determine the correct response to British people telling him the temperature.

“You went running.”

“I did.”

“You are absolutely _mad_ ,” Eames tells him, with undisguised delight.

The kids demand the paddling pool—as it turns out, less for paddling than for shouting, “Do it!  Do it now!” until Eames leaps in fully clothed and sends a mini tsunami over the adjacent flowerbed.  The cat sprints two laps around the garden before coming to a rest at Arthur’s feet, angry and bedraggled, as if Arthur has any hope of defending her against Acts of Eames.  “I know,” Arthur says, consolingly, from his seat at the table.  “He does that.”

-

Eames watches Arthur apply Factor 50 with meticulous care but when he’s offered the bottle just says, “Not all of us can look as lovely as you do pasty white.”

Arthur says, “I hear melanoma’s even less attractive.”

-

Later, when Arthur is making dinner, there’s a shrieking from the garden.  Arthur glances up from the salad vegetables he’s chopping—he doesn’t care what faces are pulled, nobody’s developing deficiencies on his watch—to make sure that Felix isn’t hitting anyone with a stick, and is met instead with the sight of Eames dangling his six-year-old sister into the pool by her ankles.

Immy is red-faced and wriggling, fingers dragging in the water as if seeking purchase, skirt falling around her shoulders, and she’s laughing fit to burst.

“Arthur, Arthur!” cries Felix, catching sight of him through the kitchen window.  “Help us!  _Help_!”

The fact that Felix is currently incandescent with glee undermines the urgency somewhat.

Arthur’s about to say something when Immy rallies valiantly and attempts to pull Eames’s pants down.  He swings her away, laughing—“cheeky _bugger_ ”—and her trailing arms spray water.  Felix leaps back with a yelp and Eames’s eyes meet Arthur’s through the window; his grin widens, impossibly, and Arthur feels himself flush bodily for reasons unrelated to the heat.

It’s just for a moment, and then Arthur tears his eyes away and goes back to pretending he isn’t smiling at the tomatoes.

He’d go outside, but he could see the yellow of the hosepipe snaking past Eames’s ankles.  Arthur knows a trap when he sees one.

-

All in all, it’s a good week, and a better weekend.  On Friday night he drags Ariadne out to the rooftop screening of The Silence of the Lambs in Kensington, where they drink overpriced strawberry margaritas and Arthur has strong feelings about Antony Hopkins’s accent.  On Saturday he sleeps late and then goes for a walk.  Buys an ice cream on the common, and kills a couple of hours trawling the bookshops on the high street.

On the way back, he stops by a little store that sells greeting cards that say things like, OWL ALWAYS LOVE YOU and DON’T GROW UP (IT’S A TRAP), and buys two postcards.  One for his mom of the Thames and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and one for Yusuf of the diplodocus from the Natural History Museum.  There’s a fairly sweaty busker on the corner by the Picturehouse drinking a surreptitious pint in between Ed Sheeran covers, and as Arthur is passing the sunlight hits the back of his neck and the guy hits a bum note.

In this moment, inexplicably, Arthur is overwhelmed with love for London.

When he gets back that evening, he is greeted by the sight of Felix streaking naked down the hall (a Stafford family trait, clearly), and the sound of Graham on the floor above saying, “Don’t be silly, Imogen, you _know_ it encourages your brother.”  Bath time, then.  Julia’s in the kitchen making a start on a bottle of rosé, and Eames is sprawled on the couch watching—of all things—the nineties remake of The Parent Trap.  And yeah, maybe there was a time when Arthur would have hidden in the kitchen with a glass of wine and listened to Julia’s rundown of the gossip she heard at Pilates, but he’s warm and relaxed and so instead he drops down at the other end of the couch.  Eames doesn’t move his feet.  Arthur doesn’t ask him to.

“Has Immy been leading you astray again?”

“Always,” says Eames, with a grin.  “Good day?”

“Yeah,” says Arthur.  “Great day.”  Onscreen, two Lindsey Lohans are engaging in some sort of elaborate secret handshake.  “Are you seriously watching the remake?”

“This version has fencing,” Eames informs him.  “And Natasha Richardson.”

Arthur is about to tell Eames that there are better films he could be introducing the kids to when Eames says, “Do pipe down, darling, or you’ll miss the big reveal.”

Arthur pipes down.  He closes his mouth abruptly and looks at Eames, who is unconcerned and engrossed in the unfolding onscreen drama, and tries to decide if the endearment is another nuance of British interaction that Arthur is failing to grasp, because as it is his heart is suddenly beating rather quickly.

Before he can come to any conclusions—or venture any hypotheses—there is a thud and the sound of scampering feet, and then Felix emerges again, this time dripping wet and dragging his towel ineffectively behind him. 

“Hello,” says Eames.  “Shouldn’t you have some trousers on?”

Which Arthur thinks is more than a little ironic coming from Eames.  He’s just about to say so, in fact, when he is distracted by the red spots dotting Felix’s shoulders.  The spots that weren’t there last night when Arthur was attempting to dissuade Felix from drinking the bathwater.

“Um,” says Arthur.

-

It’s chicken pox.  Of course it is.  By the next morning Felix is decidedly spotty, and bizarrely pleased by this turn of events—keeps finding new marks and showing them off to people like they’re medals of honour.  Immy, to nobody’s surprise, is hard on his heels.  Julia drives to the pharmacy first thing and returns with an arsenal of calamine lotion, Calpol and Ella’s smoothies.   Arthur’s had it, fortunately—as have Julia and Graham.

“Bloody plague carriers,” Eames says, petulantly, from beneath his mound of blankets.  He’s drenched in sweat but shivers violently when uncovered.  “See if I ever bring them presents again.”

“Drink your tea,” Arthur tells him, not without sympathy.

Really, it’s not all that bad for the kids—Immy and Felix are quite taken with the rash, almost competitive about it, if a little disgruntled not to be able to share it with their friends.  Immy is particularly excited by the special pink cream.  It helps, too, that they’re spoilt the whole time: allowed to watch as much TV as they want, showered with treats every time Graham and Julia get home.  Arthur even emails Yusuf for the mug cake recipe he uses when stoned.

Eames, by contrast, does not suffer quietly.  Arthur expected nothing less.

Everything is too cold, or too hot; he’s hungry, and then he’s not.  His head is _killing him._ Arthur is aware, on some level, that he is paid to take care of two Stafford children, but it’s hard to recall when there’s a third oversized one tearing up over Littlefoot’s mother in The Land Before Time _._

Arthur’s man enough to admit, at this point, that Eames is beautiful.  Eames is a fucking vision, he’s a work of art, and when he insists on wearing shirts tight enough that you can see the ink through them it’s hardly surprising that Arthur occasionally loses his train of thought.  Except that at this moment Eames is sad and tetchy and certainly the least attractive he has ever been, not least because he won’t “stop _scratching_ , damn it,” but all it really does is make Arthur want to stroke his hair.

And the point at which Arthur finds himself retrieving that third mug cake from the microwave.  Well.

This is the point at which Arthur thinks he might actually be in trouble.


	6. The Hampstead

Arthur is contemplating the tepid remains of his tea with the vacant stare of the very tired.  He has spent the afternoon corralling too many six-year-olds across busy London roads, because playdates always seem like a good idea until you realise you only have two hands, and Julia has a habit of springing them on him unexpectedly.

“You might want to make yourself scarce.”

“My ears are still ringing,” Arthur tells Eames mournfully, as he crosses the kitchen.

“Immy’s friends tend to have that effect,” Eames says, opening the fridge.  “I’m sure you were terrifyingly competent, as always.”

Eames is wearing jeans and the Eiffel 65 shirt Arthur once saved from a darks wash.  The jury’s still out on whether Eames is a massive fucking hipster or just eccentric and European, but Arthur allows himself to be briefly distracted by the stretch of the fabric on his upper arms while Eames is rummaging for something with sugar in it.  “Are you going out?” Arthur asks, after a moment.

“Celebrating being no longer contagious,” Eames replies, emerging triumphant with a Milkybar yoghurt.  “And being mostly pox-free.”  He licks the lid clean and leaves it on the counter when he goes to grab a spoon.  If Eames ever vanished, Arthur thinks, he’d follow the trail of yoghurt pots and candy wrappers left behind him.

“You’d be _entirely_ pox-free,” Arthur says, “if you’d just use the calamine lotion.”

“Well, you do insist on leaving me to my own devices.”  Eames waves his spoon disapprovingly.  “I have hard-to-reach areas, Arthur.”

“And I am going nowhere near your _hard-to-reach_ _areas_.”

It’s bad enough that he spent a week tucking him in—Arthur doesn’t trust himself to be slathering lotion anywhere.

“I really don’t know why you rebuff me so.”

 _Neither do I._ Not for the first time, Arthur teeters on the edge of saying something inflammatory; Eames has a tendency to bring that out in him.  It’s on the tip of his tongue— _neither do I_ —but as he thinks it his heart starts beating very quickly, because it feels like the kind of sentence that is followed by a weighty silence.  It feels like the kind of sentence that you can’t take back.

It has always been abundantly clear that Eames isn’t all that concerned with lines, which means that it falls to Arthur to draw them.  Which is really predicated on the fact that Arthur _wants_ to draw them.

Which he’s not sure he does.

Except that, faced with the prospect of deliberately crossing one, Arthur is abruptly petrified.  He _likes_ Eames, which means that there’s something real at stake here—something more than the potential for an awkward living situation.  He could be misreading this.  Maybe the certainty that Arthur won’t give him the time of day is half the appeal; if Arthur goes too far, what then?

He liked Paul, to begin with.

Arthur swallows, and breaks eye contact.  “Why should I make myself scarce?” he says, instead.

“Hm?”

“You said that I should make myself scarce.”

“Rupert, sweetheart, would you get the good glasses down for me?”  Julia breezes in, fiddling with one of her earrings.  “They’ll be here in half an hour.”

“Having people over?” Arthur asks.

“Book club,” says Julia, and Arthur determinedly does not look at Eames.  “My turn to host.  We’re discussing _The Goldfinch_.”

“Great choice,” Arthur says, without thinking.  Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Eames shaking his head frantically.

“Well,” says Julia, “you’re very welcome to join us—if you don’t have any other plans.”

Arthur is a bad liar.  He doesn’t like doing it, so he’s never really developed the knack, which is how he ends up helping out at his mother’s garden parties, or watching experimental films in which actors dressed in tin-foil costumes do unenthusiastic Mexican Waves.

Arthur opens his mouth knowing he won’t be able to come up with an excuse on the spot—is almost resigned to it, when the matter is taken out of his hands.

“Actually,” says Eames, setting the glasses down on the counter, “Arthur’s coming out with me tonight.”

“Oh,” says Julia, looking between them.  “How lovely.”  She looks almost absurdly pleased, and now Arthur’s blushing, he can feel it, oh god, why is this happening?  It’s Kew Gardens all over again.

“You’ll have to recruit him another time,” Eames says, firmly.

“I’m not scared of Harriet Walters,” Arthur tells Eames, when Julia disappears in search of the good rosé, because he wants that on the record.

“All sensible men are scared of Harriet Walters,” Eames says.  “Richard Walters is scared of Harriet Walters.”

“You don’t have to—” Arthur starts, and is immediately cut off.

“Darling.  Obligations really aren’t my style.”

 _Darling_.  Arthur swallows again.

“Besides,” Eames says, with that assurance that is half of his charm, “you should see a little of my London, before you leave.”

-

They go to the theatre.  Of course they do.

Eames’s London is the Hampstead, where he gets them comp tickets and has to say hello to at least half a dozen people who all seem to know him, and Arthur really isn’t surprised.  Eames has a sort of gravitational pull about him.

He also happens to work there.

“You look surprised,” Eames says, while the barista—Dan, who apparently owes Eames a fiver—is making their drinks.  “What did you think I was doing every evening?”

“Something a little less respectable,” Arthur tells him, because it’s the truth.

Eames grins and grabs both their coffees to carry over to one of the tables.  _Not a date_ , Arthur reminds himself, as he follows.

“So what _do_ you do here?” Arthur asks, once they’re sat down.

“Front of house stuff, mostly.  Usually get to see the plays a couple of times at least during their run.  And I met my last director here.”  At Arthur’s frown, he elaborates.  “Almost everyone here is an aspiring something.  Actor, director, producer.  Dan’s doing an MA in Writing at Central.  It’s a good place to make contacts.”

Arthur knows for a fact that Julia and Graham vacationed with two BBC producers last year, and that one of Graham’s old rugby buddies is a former Artistic Director of the RSC.  If Eames is set on making contacts here, then it’s not out of necessity.  Arthur doesn’t say this.

-

They drink their coffee in the auditorium with the evening sun streaming in through the huge windows, and then head in to find their seats.  It’s a two-man play, and a good one—beautifully choreographed, and well-paced, and engaging, but Arthur can’t help if his eyes stray to Eames from time to time.  Even in this strange half-light his profile is striking.

The seats are close enough together that if Arthur leans back their shoulders brush, because Eames sprawls in his seat, and that one point of contact really shouldn’t set his heart racing when they’re surrounded by hundreds of strangers, but it’s right on the line between _casual_ and _might actually_ be _something_ , so he does.

Lean back.

-

They go to the bar, after.

“Her timing,” Eames says, shaking his head.  “It was just _phenomenal_ , didn’t you think it was phenomenal?  For that last monologue, _god_ , I was in _pieces_.”  There’s a glass of wine in front of him but it’s mostly untouched—Eames’s review of the play requires both hands for broad gesticulations.  Arthur is caught by the enthusiasm.  He was prepared for comments on directorial choices and technical issues and he gets them, sure enough, but they’re offhand, throwaway—details and not the big picture. 

When Eames gets excited his eyes light up and his smile softens, shifts from wicked and knowing to wide and guileless.

Arthur opens his mouth to say something about the scene transitions, because Eames hasn’t said anything yet about the scene transitions, when someone to their left says, “ _There_ you are, Dan said you were here.”

The speaker is pale and angular and almost dangerously pretty—ninety per cent cheekbone with the palest eyes Arthur’s ever seen—and he’s sliding in next to Eames with a drink in his hand.

“Plague-free and everything,” Eames confirms, with a grin.  “Did you catch the performance?”

“Not yet.  Mal and Dom saw it tonight, they’re around here somewhere.”

“Robert’s another aspiring actor,” Eames tells Arthur, “cum playwright, because he can’t make up his mind.”

“I dabble,” says Robert.

“Rob, this is Arthur.  He did The Wizard of Oz in middle school.”

“To rave reviews,” Arthur says, on impulse, and Robert laughs.  Eames is looking at Arthur with barely disguised amusement, and something else Arthur is disinclined to examine closely.

They’re joined shortly after by a tall blond man who shakes Arthur’s hand like they’re at a business meeting—“Dom Cobb, good to meet you”—and a lovely brunette in staggeringly high heels who leans across to kiss him on both cheeks.

Mal opens with, “ _Chéri_ , your coat is delightful, where did you find it?” and follows it up with, “Do you like riddles?” and before Arthur knows it he’s tumbling out of the theatre an hour after closing minus a cufflink with plum lipstick on his cheek—“ _rose noir_ , Arthur, don’t be gauche”—and Ben fucking Whishaw’s autograph in his pocket, because professedly Robert is assisting with _Bakkhai_ at The Almeida (caps audible).  And okay, maybe Arthur never saw his lauded Hamlet—“it was _resilient_ ,” Dom assures him, slopping Glenfiddich over his fingers—but he fucking _loved_ Skyfall.

“Of _course_ you have Bond fantasies,” Eames says, with something like—.  Something like _something._ “I’ve seen you iron your t-shirts when think no one is watching.”

Which is ridiculous, because Arthur doesn’t wear t-shirts, they make his arms look skinny, and he’s busy telling Eames this and Eames is busy laughing at him, when someone—Dom?—calls after them,

“Hold up, you two—Rob’s dad’s in Shanghai.”

“We’re going to head home,” says Eames, and slips a hand into Arthur’s back pocket.  Arthur is so busy jolting at the sudden contact that he doesn’t realise Eames is reaching for the programme and not feeling him up until the hand is retreating, paper caught between index and middle fingers.

Eames says, “Fischer’s a bloody flirt.”

Which is a fucking joke, really, since Eames does little else.  And yeah, okay, Arthur has had too much to drink, he really has, because the way Eames is looking at him now he suspects he might have said that last part aloud.

Rather than maintain eye contact, Arthur looks at the programme in Eames’s hand.  There’s a phone number scrawled in blue ballpoint in the bottom left hand corner—Robert’s, presumably.  Arthur’s eyes are on the digits but he’s not really looking at them.  His face feels suddenly hot.  It seems like they’re stood like that for a long time, and maybe they are, because when he looks up again there’s a taxi waiting by the kerb. 

“Home, then?” he asks, hesitantly.

Eames just looks at him, for a moment.  “Do you want to go home?” he says, eventually.

For the second time that day, Arthur teeters.

This time, he falls.

“Not yet,” Arthur says, truthfully.  Decisively.

The answering smile is _dazzling_.  “Not yet,” Eames agrees, and holds open the taxi door.


End file.
